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Friday, February 26, 2016

Lithuania: Jews call for government to publish list of Nazi collaborators

The government of Lithuania must publicly disclose its list of citizens who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II, the former Soviet republic’s organized Jewish community has demanded.

Information regarding the document, which records more than 2,000 Lithuanians “alleged to have committed or contributed to the murder of Jews during World War II” must be published, along with a detailed breakdown of the government’s subsequent actions toward the accused, demanded Faina Kukliansky, the president of the organized community, in an open letter to the country’s prosecutor general and the government-sponsored Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of the Residents of Lithuania last Thursday.

“The Lithuanian Jewish Community believes refusal to release the list could have negative repercussions at the international as well as national level and could give rise to various theories that would damage the reputation of the Lithuanian state – for example, that Lithuania is avoiding the criminal prosecution in cases of still-living Holocaust perpetrators – and that might be exploited and manipulated for political aims unfavorable to the Lithuanian state,” Kukliansky wrote.